Internet Sopa/Pipa revolt: Don't declare victory yet

There's a bit of a dancing-in-the-street mentality online in
response to a widespread internet revolt against anti-piracy
legislation that many believe goes too far fighting online
copyright and trademark infringement.

Thousands of sites, big and small, went dark or altered themselves to protest the proposed
Protect IP Act (Pipa) in the Senate and the Stop Online Piracy Act
(Sopa) in the House.

But by no sense of the imagination are these bills scuttled,
despite Senate websites reportedly buckling under the weight of
constituents weighing in against the measure.

Most important, amended proposals are likely to rear their ugly
heads soon in response to White House criticism of the Domain Name
System features of the bills.

Rep. Lamar Smith says he will bring an amended version of SOPA
to the House Judiciary Committee sometime in "February." And Senate
action on an amended PIPA, either on the floor or before the Senate
Judiciary Committee, is tentatively scheduled next week.

For the moment, however, those participating in what is believed
to be the largest online backlash to proposed US legislation should
briefly pat themselves on the back.

We won't bore you with the details on what sites went dark or
altered themselves. But we should point out that the protests have
put the content industry, the main backers of the legislation, on
the defensive.

The Motion Picture Association of America sent out a factsheet
saying "Nothing in the Protect IP Act can reasonably be construed
as promoting censorship."

And the Recording Industry Association of America tweeted
"Perish the thought" that students must do "original research"
Wednesday because of Wikipedia's self-inflicted 24-hour outage.

The best-case scenario? In this election year, the bills would
become too polarising for US presidential candidates and die.

But word to the wise, keep the anti-blacklisting celebrations
short: Pipa and Sopa aren't dead yet.